Abstract
What place do colonial statues occupy within conceptions of Europe’s cultural heritage? Can Europe’s colonial cultural heritage be re-invented to build more open and inclusive communities? This project seeks to bring colonial heritage to the forefront in the discussions of European identity by critically engaging with the current discourses on the contested meanings underlying European statues that occupy its public spaces, commemorating a history of economic and cultural exploitation across the globe. Using the “toppling” of statues as a starting point, the project examines transnational and transimperial temporal and spatial connections and seeks to uncover colonial heritage as a joint European phenomenon, shared by bigger and smaller states alike. What do colonial statues speak about the past, how do visitors and residents (European and from erstwhile colonies) respond to them, and to what extent will these statues continue to play a part in Europe’s future? This project brings together researchers from seven Una Europe universities to increase academic collaboration, organizing and delivering an online course and public outreach events. It will also bring academics together with museum curators and directors in an interdisciplinary workshop to discuss ethical ways of memorializing and representing the colonial past in Europe and for Europe. This application and these activities represent an initial stage of a long-term research project focusing on the intersections of the colonial past and the present in shaping Europe’s public spaces and its cultural heritage.
Project duration
January 2023 - December 2022
Unibo Team Leader
Prof. Karin Pallaver
Scientific responsible for the Department
Prof. Janne Lahti, University of Helsinki
Partnership
- University of Helsinki
- Universidad Complutense de Madrid
- KU Leuven
- University of Edinburgh
- Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna
- Freie Universität Berlin
- Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Budget
16.000 euro
Level I ERC sectors
- SH5 Cultures and cultural production: literature, visual and performing arts, music, cultural and comparative studies
- SH6 The study of the human past: archaeology, history and memory
Level II ERC sectors
- SH5_6 History of art and architecture, arts-based research
- SH5_8 Cultural studies, cultural identities and memories, cultural heritage
- SH6_9 Modern and contemporary history
- SH6_10 Colonial andp ost-colonial history
- SH6_13 Gender history, cultural history, history of collective identities and memories, history of religions